ALBANY, Ga. - A stand of American chestnut trees that somehow escaped a
blight that killed off nearly all their kind
in the early 1900s has been discovered along
a hiking trail not far from President
Franklin D. Roosevelt's Little White House
at Warm Springs.

The find has stirred excitement among
those working to restore the American chestnut, and raised hopes that
scientists might be able to use the pollen
to breed hardier chestnut trees.

"There's something about this place that
has allowed them to endure the blight," said
Nathan Klaus, a biologist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources
who spotted the trees. "It's either that
these trees are able to resist the blight,
which is unlikely, or Pine Mountain has
something unique that is giving these trees
resistance."

Experts say it could be that the
chestnuts have less competition from other
trees along the dry, rocky ridge. The fungus
that causes the blight thrives in a moist
environment.

The largest of the half-dozen or so trees
is about 40 feet tall and 20 to 30 years
old, and is believed to be the southernmost
American chestnut discovered so far that is
capable of flowering and producing nuts.

"This is a terrific find," said David
Keehn, president of the Georgia chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation. "A tree of this
size is one in a million."

The rugged area known as Pine Mountain is
at the southern end of the Appalachians near
Warm Springs, where Roosevelt built a home
and sought treatment after he was stricken
with polio in 1921.

"FDR may have roasted some chestnuts on
his fire for Christmas or enjoyed their
blooms in the spring," Klaus said.

The Chestnut Foundation may use pollen from
the tree in a breeding program aimed at
restoring the population with
blight-resistant trees.

"When the flowers are right, we're going
to rush down and pollinate the flowers,
collect the seeds a few weeks later and
collect the nuts," Klaus said. "If we ever
find a genetic solution to the chestnut blight, genes from that tree
will find their way into those trees."

The chestnut foundation has been working for
about 15 years to develop a blight-resistant
variety. The goal is to infuse the American chestnut with the blight-resistant genes
of the Chinese chestnut.

American chestnuts once made up about 25
percent of the forests in the eastern United
States, with an estimated 4 billion trees
from Maine to Mississippi and Florida.

The trees helped satisfy demand for
roasted chestnuts, and their rot-resistant
wood was used to make fence posts, utility
poles, barns, homes, furniture and musical
instruments.

Then these magnificent hardwoods, which
could grow to a height of 100 feet and a
diameter of 8 feet or more, were almost
entirely wiped out by a fast-spreading
fungus discovered in 1904.

"There are no chestnuts roasting on an
open fire, and if they are, they're
Chinese," Keehn said.